Small curvature surfaces in hyperbolic 3-manifolds

Christopher J. Leininger

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arXiv · math/0409455

Small curvature surfaces in hyperbolic 3-manifolds

Christopher J. Leininger

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Abstract

In a paper of Menasco and Reid, it is conjectured that there exist no hyperbolic knots in S^3 for which the complement contains a closed embedded totally geodesic surface. In this note, we show that one can get "as close as possible" to a counter-example. Specifically, we construct a sequence of hyperbolic knots {K_n} with complements containing closed embedded essential surfaces having principal curvatures converging to zero as n tends to infinity. We also construct a family of two-component links for which the complements contain closed embedded totally geodesic surfaces of arbitrarily large genera. In addition, we prove that a closed embedded surface with sufficiently small principal curvatures is not only quasi-Fuchsian (a result of W. Thurston's), but it is also either acylindrical or else the boundary of a twisted I-bundle.

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Christopher J. Leininger. 2004-09-23. Small curvature surfaces in hyperbolic 3-manifolds. https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0409455

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